Mr. Lewis Gross

Recipient of the Dr. Savio and Mrs. Pattie Woo Research Scholarship

This summer, I worked in the Musculoskeletal Research Center (MSRC) under the guidance of Ms. Jonquil Mau, a PhD. Candidate at the University of Pittsburgh in Bioengineering and under the mentorship of Dr. Woo, Director of the MSRC. My project focused on the pullout force needed for the removal of a magnesium based suture anchor in a polyurethane foam bone model. A previous student had run experimental trials to obtain a value for the pullout force required to remove the suture anchor. In consequence, my research sought to model the pullout with a Finite Element Analysis, using ANSYS Workbench Static Structural Analysis. The goal of this project was to obtain a value from ANSYS that matched the experimental data within 10 N.

I would like to thank ASIAM Institute for the opportunity to work with Dr. Woo at the MSRC this summer. All the knowledge I have gathered can be applied to all of my future research or work opportunities. I learned the importance of reading as much relevant scientific literature as possible. This will help to keep up to date within the field, while also providing ideas for new things to test or new methods that could be incorporated into one’s own research. Also, I learned that there are some things that do not have a clear, well-established answer, and that, sometimes, the answers to these questions must be sought out and figured out on one’s own. Finally, I learned that it is important to critique other’s research to ensure valid methods and results. The same level of scrutiny must also be applied to one’s own research. Practicing one leads to application of the other. The stricter one is with how they conduct their research, the more trusted the results and findings can be.